The essential characteristics of face-to-face meetings can be simulated by multimedia telecommunications conference systems. Such conference systems permit separated meeting participants to communicate with one another in multiple media such as video voice and/or data from their own workplace without requiring that they convene in the same place.
In prior known multimedia conference systems, it has been required that the individual meeting participants had to be conversant with sophisticated video and data communications protocols, including, for example network address and transport protocols, in order to set-up and handle a multimedia call in order to establish and operate a virtual meeting. If a prospective participant was not familiar with the video and/or data protocols, it essentially precluded his or her participation in the full virtual meeting. Those prospective participants would be limited to only the audio portion of the virtual meeting. This of course is extremely undesirable. Therefore, a problem exists in providing an easy natural real life way for unsophisticated prospective meeting participants to set-up and handle multimedia telephone calls.